Inside the 100 megawatt Lomé Thermal Power Plant in Togo, which was completed in 2010 with the support of OPIC financing and political risk insurance. The project was one of the largest investments ever made in the Republic of Togo and it succeeded in tripling the country’s energy generation capacity and significantly reducing rolling blackouts.

During the Impact Awards ceremony on March 11, ContourGlobal President and CEO Joe Brandt described how the challenges of building a major power plant in one of the world’s least developed countries extended far beyond the plant itself. “How do you build a power plant in a place that doesn’t have any roads leading to the power plant site? How do you build bridges that can support the weight of the engines as they come off the port?” he said.

“This was one of those ‘Let’s do something great’ projects,” he said. “It was brash and the odds were long… And without the support of OPIC it never would have been a success.”